From the Covid stats, issued yesterday (albeit out of date in the second chart):
The government is still pretending Covid is over.
That is anything but true.
What it would be to have a government that made decisions based on the facts, and not dogma. We are are a very long way from that right now. The pretence, like so many others by this government, might prove to be very costly.
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Could Cheltenham prove a disaster second time around ?
The idiocy of abandoning absolutely all precautions sadly, in relation to Covid appears to have infected just about all country leaders.
Is Dido still in charge there?
I don’t think Cheltenham will have a great impact this time around.
The Omicron BA.2 variant (which appears to be 30 to 40% more transmissible than Omicron BA.1 – it should have its own Greek letter already!) is dominant around the country and makes up more than 80% of all cases. Cheltenham may end up being a ‘superspreader’ event, but no more so than any other busy pub, gig or sporting event (plus schools, of course) which is taking place right now. The narrative that the pandemic is over has been readily accepted by almost everyone as a quick glance at people’s levels of masking in shops and supermarkets will tell you, hence the rocketing rates of infection.
Cheltenham will be a drop in the ocean in comparison to what is occurring elsewhere in the community.
I wonder how long it will be before the ‘government advice’ about masking becomes a little stronger than it currently is. They haven’t managed to dismantle the testing and surveillance architecture yet so the numbers might be enough to scare them into making some changes before the end of the month. About time the 4th booster for the elderly and vulnerable was rolled out as well, given the lack of other mitigations.
As always the NHS workers will be the ones left to try and deal with the implications of government policy.
Covid is now like austerity to Johnson & Co – yes it will kill some of us but that is nature’s way of ridding us of the weakest and the other burdens that their Randian world view cannot entertain.
After two years of lockdown, isolation, mask wearing, care and consideration for others, four of my close friends and I now have covid, within weeks of restrictions being lifted. During those two years, none of my friends, relatives, acquaintances even, contracted the virus, thanks to the care and consideration of others, and the effectiveness of the NHS vaccination programmes.
Now the government has what it always wanted: the freedom for the virus to spread unrestrained, and for the population, including my friends and me, to be unwilling subjects of the herd immunity experiment.
Many people I know seem to be getting it…
Well said. In Scotland the Conservative determination on Covid to ‘let everything rip’, and rely on a Hobbesian state of nature, with everyone fending for themselves; has had a dreadful, exaggerated divisive effect, because if theScottish Conservatives can’t govern through election, or assert some delusional faux entitlement, they set out simply to use media and political discourse to disrupt governance for everyone else; and in the case of Covid, the health an safety of others; especially the vulnerable, who of course cannot live in total exclusion but rely on support of others, who are not hermits and therefore permanenant potential transmitters of a highly contagious virus, and with either virtually no protection tht may not be compromised. That is just a fact.
The Conservatives represent the modern, extreme end of an intellectual spectrum defined by the brilliant scholar CB MacPherson as “Possessive Individualism” (he wrote an outstanding book on the intellectual origins of this rights based politics in the thought of Hobbes and Locke; specifically the period before Economics turned the same concept into a powerful vehicle for neoliberal’s triumph; in the hands of those who, at best did not understand what they were doing).
permanenant? Permanent with a stutter.
🙂
Younger friends had a double 40th celebration on Saturday. By yesterday 11 of them had come down with Covid. Imagine those figures replicated across the UK, and factor in Cheltenham etc. This is a tsunami.
I went out for a night out with friends (meal and many drinks in busy pubs) in Bristol in mid-February when prevalence of the more transmissible Omicron BA.2 was much lower. All of us late 40s, all triple-boosted. Two out of 8 caught Covid on the night – probably Omicron BA.1. I had been infected at the start of the month so had immunity and one of the others had previous had Covid twice (plus vaccinations) so he was probably relatively immune. The only thing which will keep infection rates of BA.2 down during this latest surge is if vaccination plus BA.1 infection offers decent immunity.
Of course, that doesn’t help young children (such as my two) who caught Omicron BA.1 during December/early 2022 but who aren’t eligible for vaccination. The available data appears to indicate that those unvaccinated who have been infected with BA.1 have some protection against BA.2 but not, perhaps a huge amount. As it stands, my niece has today tested positive for Covid again after previously being infected in early December (probably with Delta).
It’s 13 now. No telling who those 13 have infected in turn in the interim…and on, and on.
The Scottish Conservatives have conducted a long running campaign against all the Scottish Government protection measures, solely on the basis that Scotland has not followed precisely the policies in England. This has been a quite contemptible campaign, because it can only be calculated to disrupt the effects of Scottish policy. Thus they make much of the uptick in Scottish infection rates, but without acknowledging the fact that this was inevitable given the BA2 variant; now 80% of infections in Scotland are BA2 sourced, and BA2 is more infectious than the original Omicron variant.
As far as I can see BA2 accounts for 57% of infections in England, which suggests that England is at an earlier stage of the BA2 surge. The problem here is that the desire to exploit political advantage drives everything the Scottish Conservatives do and say. It is an appalling way to conduct politics; a reflection of the people chosen to make policy in the Conservative Party, and the values they represent.
The Tory track record on Covid is dire
Quite apart from the current resurgence (which may be due to relaxations of behaviour, or possibly an increased transmissibility of the BA2 strain of the still dominant Omicron variant) the past two years suggests significant new variants arise every 6-8 months. We can expect one later this year, and the government have massively cut back their surveillance which was perhaps the only UK response which was unequivocably “world-beating”.
Where is the planning for the next variant?
I have heard about a new, hybrid variant in this country called (I think) Delticron which apparently contains elements of both Delta and Omicron. Can’t track down where I read about (or was told about) this, but it reinforced my commitment to being cautious.
It is out there. Ba.2 I think
I think Deltacron is half Delta, half Omicron (presumably created by cellular recombination in a patient who managed to get infected by both variants simultaneously). BA.2 is basically Omicron with a couple of slight changes.
The last I heard there had been very few detected cases of Deltacron, but it was being watched closely because of the risk of it having Omicron’s ability to infect people who are vaccinated, but also produce more serious disease like Delta. But to be honest they don’t yet know, there aren’t enough cases for that sort of analysis.
Deltacron is a recombination of Delta and Omicron (not sure whether BA.1 or BA.2) – somebody was infected with both at the same time and they mutated together. No indication as yet that it is ‘fit’ enough to spread ahead of either Delta or Omicron BA.1/BA.2, however. It might be that the recombination leads to the vulnerabilities of each variant being combined and not the bits which cause greater transmission and more serious disease. Let’s hope so.
There is also a Omicron BA.3 which is a recombination of BA.1 and BA.2, but this has pretty much died out because BA.1 and BA.2 (and BA.1.1!) were all much more transmissible.
Incidentally, BA.2 doesn’t have just a couple of slight changes in comparison to BA.1. BA.2 has 28 mutations not found in BA.1 (and BA.1 has 24 mutations, I think it is), not found in BA.2. The following Venn diagram shows just how different these two are:
https://imageio.forbes.com/specials-images/imageserve/621640d6f722ed4152a1080b/Omicron-Sub-lineages-Venn-Diagram/960×0.png?fit=bounds&format=png&width=960
Hope the link works. They originated in the same place (whether an immune-compromised patient or from mutations within an animal population – it isn’t known yet), but the differences are enough that BA.2 should certainly have been awarded it’s own Greek letter by now and transmissibility seems to be heading towards the measles range. All of these Omicron-type variants are so far away from earlier variants such as Alpha/Beta/Delta and the original virus out of China that immunity from prior infection isn’t a huge amount of use, though it still ought to reduce the risk of serious disease. Vaccination together with infection (with any variant) seems to provide broader protection, but the problem we’re seeing now is that the vast Omicron BA.1 wave of infections from December to February hasn’t ‘ended the pandemic’, because antibodies for BA.1 don’t neutralise BA.2 particularly well (though still probably better than antibodies from prior variants). This means that unvaccinated children, especially, who were infected with Delta and Omicron BA.1 since the start of the school year will be susceptible to reinfection. Attack rate for BA.2 within the home appears to be 30 to 40% greater for BA.2 than BA.1, so their parents are likely to get it as well. And grandparents, and the medical staff who treat them and so on. All the while, the efficacy of the boosters is waning as time passes since they were given.
I don’t think the large wave of infections will mean that we’ll see scary rates of death as is the case in Hong Kong (and probably China in the near future), but numbers will continue to be significant and the pressure on the NHS will be terrible once again. We’re still left hoping that there aren’t going to be any really serious long-term issues caused by infections, but it is just a hope.
Short term deaths may not be the issue now
But cardiac and other consequence appear to be very high
And in themselves current variants seem very debilitating
It looks increasingly likely that most, if not all of the population will get this at some point now.
I think you said something similar at the very beginning.
I would like (but will never see) a people’s enquiry into the whole thing, with particular attention being paid to certain groups and individuals who were allowed to spread misinformation via the media, worryingly, they also have the ear of Conservative back benchers.
On of the groups rhyme with FART.
https://36085122-5b58-481e-afa4-a0eb0aaf80ca.usrfiles.com/ugd/360851_62aeecaeb6944934b6c55d41708d7eeb.pdf
The people’s covid inquiry, executive summary.
https://www.peoplescovidinquiry.com/join-our-sessions
Amen to all the words of caution and information above – and to your comment, Richard, re the appalling – if not actually criminal(?) – Tory track record on all of this.
The death rate also remains simply dreadful. By the Guardian’s figures this morning, the current daily rate is 153, up 30 from the previous week. That is the fatal crash of two jumbo jets a week – and the public is being encouraged to regard the pandemic as “over”!!
The Covid ‘enquiry’ – short of a political miracle – is plainly set to be the slowest drying whitewash of all time.
It is increasingly hard to be accustomed, after so many ‘lucky’ decades, to find ourselves living in one of history’s truly bad times.